The present invention relates to an electronic component inserting apparatus for automatically inserting the electronic components into a printed circuit board and, more particularly, to an inserting apparatus for use in a component mounting machine suitable for small-sized printed circuit boards, which is adapted to easily rearrange the positions of the components on the circuit board by changing the insertion angle of the components to be inserted into the circuit boards in accordance with the required arrangement of the components on the circuit board.
Conventionally, such components C are engaged, in the same direction, with respect to an axis of the circuit board K as shown in FIG. 1 while the circuit board is transferred among many inserting apparatuses so as to mount the various components thereon. However, the design of circuits on such a circuit board is difficult and a dense arrangement of components can not be achieved. To avoid this difficulty, several different component insertion angles relative to the board axis must be used by the inserting apparatus to mount the components on the circuit board to form a dense arrangement of the components. There is shown in FIG. 2, a method of inclining the inserting apparatus bodies S with respect to the length of the transfer apparatus T carrying the circuit boards K. FIG. 3 shows an inserting apparatus according to the prior art and having an actuator 2 and gears 3 and 4 used to turn the insertion head 1 of the inserting apparatus S to the various inserting angles for the component thereby to change the inserting angle of the component without changing the mutual relationship between the inserting apparatus S and the circuit board. However, an inserting apparatus which is capable of inclining the apparatus body for achieving the desired insertion angle, as shown in FIG. 2, has disadvantages in that the angle to which the apparatus body can be inclined in limited and the pitch between the inserting apparatuses must be large. The apparatus of FIG. 3 is disadvantageous in that an actuator 2 and gears 3 and 4 are required for each inserting apparatus S, thus resulting in large-size and expensive apparatus.